Last week, images of burning police cars in a small rural community in the Canadian province of New Brunswick made the rounds of both corporate and social media. The issue--hydraulic gas fracturing ("fracking")--is one that has impacted communities across the United States, Canada, and many other countries around the world.
The issues are similar to many other sites of resistance to fracking and other forms of fossil fuel extraction--companies coming in to poor rural communities and promising jobs and wealth, political forces permitting it to go forward without serious evaluation of either the real economic benefits or the environmental, social and cultural impacts.
But in New Brunswick, as in a few other areas in the U.S. and Canada, something different is happening--real grassroots coalitions of local people are standing up in unity. There, Mi'kmaq and other First Nations people, French Acadians and Anglophones (English-speaking Canadians) are coming together to resist even the test drilling that is a prelude to actual exploitation.
Join host Paul Roland and guests Pamela from "Moncton Anti-Fracking" and Matthew, a radio journalist from Edmundston.